It’s just about how good they are about concealing it.

The TRUST Myth

We’re told we can trust our leaders. Their words affect our daily lives and when repeated by our media, have profound effects on everything from grocery and gas prices to world peace.

However, there’s a very small number of people in the United States who can lie with near total impugnity. None of us can lie about our boss or to our customers without being promply fired. But if you’re one of the 635 on Capitol Hill (clearly not the best and brightest 635 in America either….), and as long as you’re on the clock, you can say anything you want about anything or anybody.

Must be nice….

The Senators and Representatives shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
— United States Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1)

And they’d NEVER abuse that privilege, right?

“If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
— President Barack Obama, PolitiFact ‘Lie of the Year’

Obama knew Republicans would be hard pressed and/or gutless trying to prove “high crimes and misdemeanors” here as presidents were not included in the Clause, so he just repeated this whopper over three dozen times.

We had politicians on the floor of the Senate accusing a presidential candidate of not filing income taxes (knowing he did), and after the election one was called on the mistruth to which he responded, “Well, he didn’t win, did he?”

Americans have to live with the daily ramifications of falsehoods spoken and written by House and Senate politicians, echoed by both legacy and social media. Imagine how much better life could be if the elected were required to be honest….

The Only MEN ARE SLOBS Myth

There are probably hundreds of instances where women declare men slobs, pigs, etc. Husbands and boyfriends are the butt of such declarations on women’s talk shows, op-ed and social media posts, and are never called on it.

That’s because women know and consciously deflect from an ugly truth: they can be easily outed as mockable projection hypocrites if their behavioral tendencies were exposed and publicly acknowledged.

Go to any department store and look at the women’s clothing and shoe aisles. One will see blouses and dresses strewn on the floor under the hung garments. Women just throw garments anywhere but back on the racks where they found them. Shoes, instead on being put back in place after being tried on, are just left on the floor to be walked around or tripped over.

Laura has also decribed the horrors of using a women’s public restroom.

Shit, piss and menstraul fluid literally splattered on and around toilet seats, soiled femine hygene products left on the floors or stopping up toilets… yeah, it’s fuckng gross and the same women who punchline men as slobs will NEVER tell you how disgusting they are behind closed stalls.

The Myth About ACADEMICS

There is this perception that teachers and professors have the last word during any discussion. If one has any doubt, their academic credentials are thrown back in your face in an attempt to shut down any disagreement one may have with their conclusions. But why must we take their conclusion as the final word?

Because we’ve been trained to accept their word.

Teachers have the ultimate power, by issuing grades from first grade through college, to certify or destroy an academic record that has profound implications for an employment career. Since their grades are as simple as right or wrong, the implication is they know more than the student which most of the time is correct.

However in recent years, teachers (who are never given the opportunity to be vetted by parents) enter the classroom, not with the mission to educate children with the tools needed to function in society but with personal agendas that may be at odds with the values with parents. But because they are teachers with the power to destroy the academic record of any child, those agendas have been legitimized.

Parents are given no proof of the proficiency of any teacher but are supposed to accept they are good teachers simply because they’re employed by a school. We have no prior assurance teachers are actual decent people. But again because they are teachers, parents are not allowed to question their competence and sanity even when they repeatedly behave in deviant manners.

The LAWYER Myth

Given the lofty compensation for their emergency services (they’re mostly only hired when bad things happen), one would think lawyers are the ultimate professionals. Cinematic and television portrayals collectively sure give that impression.

And where’s the proof?

When looking for a lawyer, you’re presented with a headshot (usually taken when he or she was much younger). You’re to be impressed by the law school attended, their degrees, their years since passing the bar exam, and years in a legal area of expertice. But there’s one piece of very important information you won’t see in a lawyer’s bio.

When a professional sports team is looking for a new coach, the first metric their fans look at are the wins and losses. That’s the easiest way to gauge if that coach candidate is worth consideration. However with lawyers, you will NEVER see the wins and losses of any law firm or individual attorney on any website.

So how do you know if the hundreds of dollars per hour, or contingency, is going to a good lawyer or a bad one?

You won’t.

Ask an attorney for the number of their wins and losses and see what happens. Note the grammar in their response for a quick clue.

The DOCTOR Myth

Again because of their level and years of education, we’re told it’s extremely problematic to ever question the conclusion of a medical professional. But doctors and lawyers share one commonality in said professions.

They don’t perform law or medicine. They “practice”.

That long-standing word description alone should be pause for concern as the common definition is it’s a “method of learning by repetition”. Do you really want someone learning when your finances, freedom, health or life is on the line? Like lawyers, you’re to assume high-priced doctors are good at what they do despite your not given any documentation to back it up.

How many patients have they cured? How many have sued them for a misdiagnosis or negligence? How many patients have they lost?

Despite the high compensation demanded for their services, neither offer a guarantee of success.

If you don’t ask, they won’t tell you. If they do respond, they’ll probably hide behind HIPPA so they still won’t tell you.

The HEALTHY FOOD Myth

Just read the ingredients on any food product you purchase at your market of choice and you’ll be left dumbfounded because, chances are, you can’t even pronounce some of the chemicals added to what we consume on a daily basis.

It might surprise you to learn that many food additives found in bread, baked goods, and candy manufactured in the United States are banned or restricted in Europe and other parts of the world because of potential health risks. U.S. consumers generally assume that items on grocery store shelves have been vetted for safety, but a loophole in the approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) means that 99 percent of new food chemicals aren’t evaluated before they are added to products.
— Everyday Heath

While the excuse may be these chemicals are added for visual and palate aesthetics or preservation, many of these additives have quite negative short and longterm health ramifications. High fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate are some of the most widely used culprits. Funny how when you see drug commercials that reveal those pesky, possible negative side effects (that inconveniently include death), we’re never given similar warnings when it comes to the ingredients added to our food.

Are they trying to kill us?

The HOUSING SHORTAGE Myth

For anyone listening to news reports about the affordability and/or availability of homes, disregard all the metrics given as there’s one very important factor the media leaves out.

Realtors.

They set local and regional market prices based on their personal commission demands. They are the ones assuring hallucinating sellers how valuable their neglected or damaged homes are. There are more protections for buying a used car than a home purchase worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why are the homes neglected or damaged? Because some people bought over-their-head and after mortgage, bills, and daily expenses, had little money left, let alone for routine maintenance. When the inevitable happens and repairs are required, handyman cheap appears to be the remedy of choice and shoddy workmanship will be discovered belatedly by subsequent owners.

If you have the misfortune of searching for a home, there’s one constant: the condition of the homes you’ll see range from tolerable to you-must-be-high. From experience it’s safe to say 98% of the homes you’ll tour are in some way damaged. To a seller and realtor, the buyer is a mark. They want your money and conscience is in very short supply.

Unless you have the wealth to build from ground up you’ll be choosing from poorly maintained, insect and/or rodent infested, mold and/or water damaged homes with inflated prices that will help an entitled seller hit the lottery and the greedy realtor receive that generous commission. If that house was initially listed at an realistic price with honest verbal and pictorial descriptions (big IF), it’ll most likely be scooped up quickly by another realtor/broker who’ll put the minimum into that house and flip it at a hefty markup. It’s the optional ethics of realtors that make home prices unaffordable for most buyers, not to mention the ripple effect of jacking up the property taxes of all those around that home.

Also be wary of the typical descriptions of houses found online: “meticulously maintained”, “nestled in”, “cozy”, “spacious” and other glowing adjectives that will be fodder for instant disappointment when you visit the property. Getting honest disclosures from realtors (required by law in some states) about the house is like pulling teeth. You’ll only be told what you know to ask. Then it’s a question of how much potential money you’re willing to tolerate or invest in that house after buying that expensive shack.

Despite all you’re told, there is no housing shortage.

There IS a shortage of houses that are worth the asking price.

The QUALITY Myth

Speaking of overpriced, there was a time in America if you were to spend a little more money on an item , you were assured of receiving something of higher quality that would last for many, many years.

Those were the days.

Cars actually had steel frames and bodies that could withstand a simple bump and could inflict even more damage to whatever it came in contact with. The left saw that as unfair, so all cars were subsequently constructed with lighter materials so damage would be more equitable.

Just look at some of the 60’s era kitchen appliances you can still find in homes currently for sale.

Today, the more you spend on anything, you’ll purchase the inferior in order to get you to repeat that sad cycle. Any product or service you don’t buy often will be used against you. The quality will be questionable at best to assure multiple repeat visits that will never fix the problem. Whether we’re talking about an appliance, store, auto mechanic, finding someone who’s first mission isn’t to rip you off is like seeking the Holy Grail.

As this appears to be the current business model, not sure when our money will be respected again.

The MEDIA Myth

We’re told to trust the media, and who says that the most?

The media.

Without those who consume their product, their overinflated salaries don’t happen. News anchors must come off as authorities on any given topic and when the inevitable happens and they get something very wrong, apologies and retractions are as brief and short as possible. To make matters worse, whether we’re talking about the news or entertainment industries, these people truly believe they are smarter that the American people whose ignorance on any given topic should be solely blamed on… the media.

Our job is to control what people think.
— Mika Brzezinski, 2/22/17

Note the use of terms used when describing the American people: “average”, “everyday”, “ordinary” people. Think of the narcissistic arrogance and sense of privilege it takes to constantly look at others in that fashion. It gives too many the license to misinform and/or manipulate because they believe they know what’s best for the public, and for those they prefer and deem protectable.

Many of today’s journalists also believe if it’s something they’ve never heard of, it never happened. What could go wrong with that thinking?

Also be wary whenever a journalist cites an “expert” to justify a conclusion. More times than not like “anonymous sources”, those experts are not named and if so, the number is as few as possible. That “source” can also be an academic (see: above), or based on past incidents, can be made up altogether.

Arrogance crosses into the entertainment industry where television and movie celebrities believe they’re deep thinkers and know it all simply because of where they work, not to mention those who work for them who don’t have the guts to risk their employment and tell these entertainers when they’re wrong. As a result, embarrassingly misinformed musings are distributed to the masses.

It has been brought to my attention that, in my support of Palestine, I have inadvertently re-posted articles, and/or statements, that have contained misinformation and falsehoods. I am aware how sharing inaccurate content can cause confusion and distress; for this I am deeply sorry. I will certainly endeavour to be more diligent in future to verify anything I share online.
— Guy Pearce, actor

“Inadvertently”….

For the most part, disregard their opinions unless you put them in the parody column.

When it comes to the world of broadcast sports, on-air pundits could be the worse as too many believe they’re also comedians instead of analysts. Their jokes and segments aren’t funny, and we’re to embrace their condescending belief that eye candy is necessary to keep men interested.

Stop.

There are other examples of myths that will inevitably come to mind as life continues.

There’s an obvious problem with the subscription business model. While most people will listen to a song they like an untold number of times, people may listen to a podcast episode once; maybe twice? And then all it does is take up space. Not exactly a good use of valuable and expensive storage space and now the geniuses at these businesses are taking notice.

Apple has quietly tightened its reporting of how many people listen to podcasts, sending shock waves through an embattled audio industry still reeling from the end of the COVID-era production bubble. The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

But while few users noticed the shift, some of the biggest podcasts in the world saw their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Long-running shows that publish frequently were hit particularly hard. A user who listened to a show like The New York Times’ The Daily a few times, subscribed, but stopped listening would continue to count as a download indefinitely.
— Semafor, 1/14/24

I’ve commented on, what I consider, the failed subscription business model because while you pay for certain things you like, you’re also forced to pay for many more things you don’t. In this case, you may have a person you enjoy hearing from but you’re also paying for the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Meghan Markle, and almost every cable news personality and it’s doubtful anything you hear makes you want to hear it over and over again.

Even podcast executives believe the changes are part of a necessary shakeout in an industry whose bubbly inflation helped create the industry’s recent boom and bust.

But privately, reactions to the change have ranged from mild annoyance to legitimate alarm. Some advertising deals were inked under the assumption that shows had audiences they no longer have. The update also means that some shows could struggle to meet minimum download agreements. The fact that no major podcasts would talk about how much they lost is a sign that many big shows aren’t ready to admit how much their audiences have shrunk.

This could create some real problems in an industry that, in some cases, paid hefty up-front money to “personalities” and at some point will have to have awkward discussions with narcissists involving pay restructure because few are really rushing to hear what they say.

But even if it is not responsible for a sudden drop, podcast publishers are bracing themselves for a decline. “From our detailed analysis, these adjustments will largely impact download numbers on back catalog episodes, which are typically categorized as content older than 7 days,” Acast CEO Ross Adams wrote in a blog post on Thursday.‍ “However, it’s important to note that these adjustments do not reflect a change in the unique audience a podcast has, simply the number of downloads per user. On the whole, this will mean more accurate measurement and a more efficient depiction of a podcast’s total listens.”

You know who loves accuracy? Advertisers. And you know who doesn’t love paying for impressions that aren’t really impressions? Yeah, you get the drift. As this plays out, I will be interested to see how advertisers react to these changes.
— The Verge, 10/17/23

I can’t imagine how much a publisher pays on a monthly basis for storage, or if they own their own servers, how much it’s going to cost to expand, but if you’re having trouble getting advertisers or can’t tell them accurately what the reach to consumers is, that could be a problem.

It appears it now is.

Granted, a lot of the discussion centers around their reach to a smartphone, which nowadays also connects and sends content to automobiles (that strategically stopped putting CD players in them a few years ago). When phone manufacturers upgrade, it creates havoc downwind and that’s part of the problem.

Again, the subscription business model was ripe for those who wanted to take a website public, make a gob of money off screwed content creators, hire hundreds of employees, meanwhile forcing their consumers to pay for programming they like and programming they never consume. That is a model doomed for failure and it’s only a matter of time, especially when consumers revolt.

The geniuses as NBC decided to buck tradition, screw over the millions of football fans who already paid for cable subscriptions, and made the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs playoff game available only to those who bought a subscription to Peacock, and went as far as openly bragging about it. Yet another act of public relations arrogance, thus stupidity.

And if it’s any consolation….

Peacock finished the June quarter with 24 million subscribers, up from 22 million at the end of March — but the streamer lost $651 million over the same three months.

Sadly, those losses have pretty much become par for the course. The NBCUniversal streaming platform lost $704 million in the prior quarter (and $467 million in Q2 2022). The company expects to post “peak” losses from streaming — to the tune of $3 billion — in 2023. Good thing Comcast is soon to come into about $9 billion in streaming bucks through the sale of its Hulu stake to Disney.
— Yahoo! Entertainment, 7/27/23

Chances are very good that once their tech-challenged, NFL playoff broadcasts are over, Peacock subscription will be cancelled en masse and they have it coming.

It’s no surprise the podcast industry is cratering. Most of those, who deem themselves important, aren’t creative enough to find new ways to talk about the same thing. They seem to believe an audience will be perpetually enamored simply because they said it. But they are still a part of what we used to refer to as the “entertainment business”. With few exceptions, people talking isn’t really all that entertaining.

Especially when it comes to people who have nothing else of value to give the world.

Welcome to the real world, or what’s left of it….

An open letter to SpaceX decrying CEO Elon Musk’s recent behavior has sparked open discussion among the company’s employees in an internal chat system. Employees are being encouraged to sign onto the letter’s suggestions, either publicly or anonymously, with a signed version of the letter to be delivered to the desk of SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.

“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,” the letter states. “As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”
— The Verge, 6/16/22

Cause… effect….

SpaceX fired at least five employees for their role in drafting and circulating the open letter, according to Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Boom!

The letter, first reported by The Verge, called Musk “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” and urged the company to “publicly address and condemn” his behavior. News that people had been fired over the letter was first reported by the New York Times on Thursday, citing three employees familiar with the matter and an email from SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell.

In the email, which has also been seen by The Verge, Shotwell said the firm had investigated and “terminated a number of employees involved” with the letter. Shotwell wrote that the letter made employees “feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied,” adding that SpaceX has “no need for this kind of overreaching activism.”
— Forbes, 6/17/22

Who, besides self-absorbed woke activists, thought embarrassing and intimidating the boss into respecting and acting on their “values” was a good thing?

Those who are currently looking for new jobs and will have to answer to their next employer why they thought a public act of insubordination is something they can expect in the future.

As shared here previously, the workplace environment is now shifting back to hiring the grateful who just come to work to do a job and help the company be successful. Those who deem it their duty to inflict their personal “values” upon the rest of the company are being purged. It’s a harsh lesson that will follow disruptors in their attempt to find new work and rightfully so.

Some need be reminded the First Amendment gives us freedom of speech however people are not forced to hear and obey.

If these activists believe they can run a business (they didn’t have the smarts or money to create) better than the boss, have at it and compete. Other than that, shut and and do the job. If you can’t, you risk it all and thank Elon Musk for issuing the tough love he shouldn’t have had to waste value time to impose in the first place.

Such was the case when MSNBC’s Ari Melber expressed concern that Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter can now have profound affects on, among other things, future elections….

Not much commentary is required on this seeing how we’ve all seen how Twitter was used, especially during the 2020 presidential election, to silence one candidate over another, silence a major news publication whose reporting would have been influential in giving voters vital information about a candidate, silenced anyone who attempted to share pertinent information, and to this day silences those who share posts that influences how parents are informed about what their children are being taught behind their backs. All this by rich people who already own social media platforms, like rich brat Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

For Melber to now be concerned that Musk’s Twitter can be used to silence opposition or squelch information that may sway an election is laughable seeing how he and many others in the legacy media cheered Jack Dorsey’s Twitter for doing exactly that when it benefited Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

And as far as trusting Elon Musk, he hasn’t come close to lying to the American people as much as Democrats and their media have. No where close.

Maybe that’s the problem: politicians are considered temporary, federal employees are lifers and they’re perfectly comfortable reminding the elected of their place. The phrase “I don’t know” has been replaced by employees routinely telling oversight congressmen what they won’t do.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) got into a heated spat over the whereabouts of Hunter Biden’s laptop during a House Judiciary hearing on oversight of the FBI’s Cyber Division on Tuesday.  The Republican firebrand used his allotted time to grill the division’s assistant director Bryan Vorndran, who repeatedly told Gaetz he didn’t have any information on where the hard drive belonging to President Joe Biden’s son is currently located.

‘Sir, I’m not here to talk about the laptop. I’m here to talk about the FBI’s cyber program,’ Vorndran told Gaetz after the lawmaker asked where it was.
— Daily Mail, 3/29/22

People who are well-paid, if not overpaid, with dollars taxpayers should cough up documents formally requested within a reasonable amount of time and if they’re summoned to appear at a hearing, should be prepared to truthfully answer any question posed to them. If they can’t (or won’t), they should have to clear out their desk and find a job in the real world where the rules are very different.

§192. Refusal of witness to testify or produce papers
Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.

Seeing how the average federal employee salary is $90,510, these fines are pretty low. Hopefully a future Congress will one day make it hurt a lot more if they publicly say “no” to the boss. That could do a lot to assure the public that those whom they keep well fed will not only do their jobs but also can be truly held responsible for their performance.

Nice, right?

Subscription business models are based on the idea of selling a product or service to receive monthly or yearly recurring subscription revenue. They focus on customer retention over customer acquisition. In essence, subscription business models focus on the way revenue is made so that a single customer pays multiple payments for prolonged access to a good or service instead of a large upfront one-time price. Now, the economy is trending toward more subscriptions instead of ownership for cars, software, entertainment, and shopping. This increases the lifetime value (LTV) of the customer.
— Investopedia

When you have to call “customer service” and have to endure a Filipino accent when being told what they can’t (or won’t) do, do you feel like a valued customer after they have your money?

Corporations make you pay for monthly subscriptions despite the fact that some of the services provided are those you really don’t want and would never pay for on their own.

You buy a cell phone so you can communicate instantly with others, but you also get a device that spies on you, “free” functionality apps that also sell your data, divulges your location to people you don’t know, and based on your activity online, sends you dozens of annoying ads per month for products you have no intention of buying.

Granted, there are some “free” products that people can obtain like Facebook, Twitter, and their Big Tech subsidiaries. They just sell your personal data to advertisers.

Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly claims Facebook does not sell data. The statement has become a shield in the tumultuous era for the company. But is it true?

“As a data scientist, I am shocked that anyone continues to believe this claim,” wrote Michael Kosinski, assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, in a New York Times opinion piece. “Every time you click on a Facebook ad, Facebook sells data on you to that advertiser.”
— AZCentral, 2/15/19

Multiply that within the estimated 1.9 billion daily users, that’s a good chunk of income from what in essence are just social media websites and after they get user data, they can abuse their customers as they wish. That’s a business model probably not taught at the Wharton School… yet.

Music streaming subscriptions give you access to genres you appreciate, thus there may be two or three channels of music you’d religiously listen to. But as you (and millions of others) are paying for the service on a monthly basis, you’re also paying for genres you may genuinely dislike and artists you really abhor whose music you would never purchase.

Streaming services, like the music companies of old, screw the artists, but that’s another story altogether.

Cable companies charge monthly for hundreds of television channels while there may be less than a handful any given person may watch on a consistent basis. But since millions of viewers are paying (in some cases) close to a hundred bucks a month for bundle packages, consumers are paying for channels that would go belly up if they had to compete in an ‘à la carte’ environment.

Corporations like Amazon, thanks to their “Prime” subscriptions, are in the entertainment business, are actually making product. Some movie companies are in the streaming business. Simply by adding a “plus” on their brand gives you access to new productions of varying quality, old movies and shows you probably viewed years ago and will probably never voluntarily view again. Consistently good product is another thing, but at least Hollywood is getting paid….

But this is the current business model for corporations who want a steady stream of income despite how well their product performs and/or if all the “services” provided are what people really want or will use.

Apple Inc. is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The service would be Apple’s biggest push yet into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time — rather than just digital services.
— Bloomberg, 3/24/22

So now it’s not enough for families to pay outrageous monthly fees to pay for the phone and service but now Apple wants to charge people for the device’s guts every 30 days.

People used to buy physical newspapers because the wanted to be informed of local and national news. But now that the talent pool has degraded the product to the point where people just find the news they want online for free, some companies are putting out introductory hooks that can be as low as a dollar a week.

 
Seriously, if someone is trying to get you to buy something for a dollar a week, just how good is that product? In some cases, all you’re paying for is the privilege of seeing and hearing people blab. On the course of one’s daily activities, paying people (some of whom you may not choose to hear) to talk doesn’t exactly sound like a wise use of the monthly budget.

For the most part, when you pay a subscription you are subsidizing mediocrity. Some companies are making you choose between paying for crap or losing functionality of an expensive device you either bought outright or are making more monthly payments on.

While there are some aspects of subscription services you need or enjoy, you’re also paying for services and/or talent you may truly despise. That’s how they all stay relevant, fed and you get to pay for it. This is the current business model so suck it up.

That is until the Internet goes down.

Probably the most insulting woke ad of the year thus far aired during Super Bowl LVI by Google….

NO ONE photographs well in low or back light. To come right out and say cameras were racist until you spend as much as $700 to buy a Google Pixel 6 phone and use it to photograph black people with good lighting (daylight?) is as insulting and racist as it gets. The fine people at Google must have assumed blacks are too stupid to place the subject in a well-lit environment and/or how and when to use the flash.

Then again, liberals have always been the most condescendingly racist people in America, have never taken selective racism seriously, so this is really of no surprise.

As there are a number of reasons why this happened, none of which will be easily forthcoming, we can only look forward to this happening again.

Some rap, perhaps?

In simpler words, Joe Biden won the election, there was no cheating, the “media” said so; shut the fuck up… or else.

Dominion Voting Systems is even going as far as issuing million dollar lawsuits against anyone who dare imply their machines did anything to alter the solemn votes of Americans in favor of one candidate over another.

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have asked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler to preserve posts about the company, even if the material was already removed for spreading misinformation.

The posts need to be kept “because they are relevant to Dominion’s defamation claims relating to false accusations that Dominion rigged the 2020 election,” according to the demand letters from Dominion’s law firm Clare Locke. Dominion sued Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell for more than $1.3 billion each in January, alleging that the lawyers defamed Dominion by saying the machines were used to steal the election from President Donald Trump.

Dominion warned in its letters to the social media companies that more lawsuits would be coming.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all have policies against spreading election-related misinformation. They have been removing — with varying degrees of success — posts falsely suggesting the election had been rigged since the baseless rumors began spreading in November. Parler was effectively knocked offline in January when Amazon, Apple and Google stopped providing it technical services for violating their policies against online posts that incite violence.
— Washington Post, 2/4/21

If ANY mention of voting machine “irregularities” can and will be met with a lawsuit, why are voting machines being blamed for an election loss?

Respondent the Oswego County Board of Elections (“Oswego County”) encountered “voting machine issues in Constantia Districts 1 and 3 and Williamstown,” which required all ballots cast to be “hand counted and added to the machine totals in those election districts.”

In this case, there is reason to believe that voting tabulation machines misread hundreds if not thousands of valid votes as undervotes, (supra at 4), and that these tabulation machine errors disproportionately affected Brindisi, (id.).
— Memorandum in Support of Proposed Order to Show Cause of Respondent Anthony Brindisi, Perkins Coie LLP, 2/1/21

Upstate New York’s Oswego County uses voting machines and software provided by IMAGECAST®.

Who makes IMAGECAST® machines and software?

Uh oh.

And what lawyer, who values his or her license to practice and speak freely, would risk it all to imply a Dominion voting system provided problematic results in an election?

Marc Elias, the election lawyer who represented Democratic challenges to state rules throughout the 2020 election, alleged in a court filing this week that a close congressional race in upstate New York was marred by faulty voting machines.

In the congressional race for New York’s 22nd district, Republican Claudia Tenney currently leads incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi by a razor-thin margin of 125 votes. Tenney declared victory on Tuesday, though challenges continue. In a legal filing Monday requesting a manual audit of the election, Elias, whose Perkins Coie law firm is representing Brindisi, argued that there were “substantial errors and irregularities in the conduct of the election.”

Citing alleged discrepancies between votes counted by hand and votes counted by ballot machines, Elias argued that the error rate, extrapolated across the entire district, could mean that thousands of votes were improperly counted by the machines.

Marc Elias has made a nice living casting doubt and trying to overturn the results of elections; ONLY elections where the Democrat lost.

Elias is also representing defeated Democrat Rita Hart in Iowa’s 1st congressional district, who lost by six votes to Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller Meeks (R-IA). He is asking the Democrat-controlled House to overturn the result of the election and seat Hart, despite certification of the vote by state election authorities, bypassing Iowa courts in the process.

In addition, as Breitbart News has noted, “Elias was responsible for hiring opposition research firm Fusion GPS, on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, [which produced] the fraudulent “Russia dossier” on then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.”
— Breitbart, 2/3/21

Of course, and as usual, the hypocrisy is in your face.

If you’re a Democrat who lost a race in 2020 due to voting irregularities with a Dominion voting machine, everything necessary can and will be done to overturn the results of that election with no fear of media criticism and legal repercussion on the horizon.

However, if you’re a Republican who makes similar claims and dares mention Dominion, you will be publicly labeled a kook sharing fact-checked and debunked misinformation, be banished from social media and sued into oblivion.

Welcome to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, circa 2020-21.

The Justice Department revealed new charges against a Texas man who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack and posted online death threats against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer.

Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges stemming from the Capitol insurrection, including trespassing offenses and making death threats. Miller allegedly tweeted, “assassinate AOC,” according to court documents.
— CNN, 1/23/21

While we’re not supporting any kind of violent speech anywhere, let alone on social media where relative anonymity creates courage, people like Miller (as well as others captured following the “riot”) are not characteristic of those who attended Tea Party and Trump rallies.

In the ongoing displays of double standards, the level of law enforcement reaction and media outrage has been significantly higher when it comes to threats directed at AOC than was President Donald Trump. While social media posters and celebrities issued threats to the president and once busted gave the usual “was joking” response, some of the offending product is still readily found online and it’s safe to assume none of them have been arrested or charged.

Here’s just a few examples of death threats directed at President Trump while #KillTrump is a currently acceptable hashtag on Twitter. Yes, some of these captures are old but they haven’t been scrubbed either and we all know #BigTech knows how to make things they find offensive go away.

Had people in #BigTech put as much effort into taking down offending posts and social media accounts with the same zeal they did keeping Hunter Biden stories off their platforms prior to the presidential election, maybe some people would get it into their heads that either calling for the death of anyone (let alone bravely asking someone else to do it) is a bad thing. The possible ramifications could’ve been profound. Maybe congressmen wouldn’t have been shot during a baseball practice in Virginia or a senator wouldn’t have been near beaten to death on his front lawn.

Wouldn’t want to leave them out another of today’s realities that threats to kill police are also enjoyable, protected free speech.

But hey, it’s all in good humor when death threats are directed towards Republicans and an actionable outrage should they be directed at a Democrat.

Those are the rules.